Blurb wrote:Magicka is a satirical action-adventure game set in a rich fantasy world based on Norse mythology. The player assumes the role of a wizard from a sacred order tasked with stopping an evil sorcerer who has thrown the world into turmoil, his foul creations besieging the forces of good.

Players will be able to combine the elements to cast spells, wreaking havoc and devastation on the minions of darkness. They will also be able to team up with friends and fight their way through the campaign, or test their skills in the magickal arts through other challenging modes.

Magicka was released on Steam yesterday and is alleged to be full of bugs. In my experience, the single player mode is perfectly playable but could use a little tidying up. Arrowhead have claimed that they'll be releasing patches 'every 24 hours' and I've already received one, so that's positive.

The game itself is action-oriented and I'd call it hack'n'slash if it weren't for all the magic. Each of up to four players plays co-operatively as a little cartoonish mage in a robe, wielding eight basic elements that can be combined to create a few other elements and a much greater number of spells. It's the spell system that really sells the game. Each cast spell can be made up from up to five elements then cast out, cast on oneself, cast as an area effect around the mage, transferred to ones' weapon and used as part of an attack or, in a small number of specific cases, used to cast a specific pre-made spell such as Haste. The results are creative, varied and often surprising. Fire alone will spit forth a small cone of fire. Earth alone will launch a small rock projectile. Fire & Earth combined will launch a fireball. Perhaps most amusing of all, it's quite easy to mess up and kill yourself - not because some combinations are implicitly bad, but because of the circumstances under which they're cast. While your character is wet, attempting to combine lightning will zap you; using fire on yourself will dry you off; using cold on yourself will freeze you.

The spell components aren't necessarily balanced for the situations you'll find yourself in and I tend to use some far more often than others, but they each provide different effects that are useful in almost all battles, to varying degrees. Much of the fun comes from trying out new combinations and it's always enjoyable to find a new mechanism for keeping yourself alive longer than your enemies. Some druids I fought kept making it rain so I couldn't set fire to their treant creatures, but the game allowed me to counter this with a dispel-like effect... or by killing the druids first.

This isn't an RPG in the traditional sense; the game is made up of linear levels and while you can find new staves to cast with, new weapons to fight with and new spells for the spellbook, further increasing the possibilities for combos, there's no other inventory or form of character progression. Still, the storyline is fun and easy, albeit a little heavy on the popular culture quotes, and it looks as though it'll offer good playtime and replayability for the £7.99 I spent.

It's quite fun, but a bit frustrating some of the time. For example, I'm not attempting the boss of level 6 until they add some more checkpoints... that guy is horrible.

The spellcasting is awesome, but it's hard to tell if a few spells will end up coming out waaay on top. Some definitely seem much more worthwhile than others.

Hawknc wrote:Gotta love our political choices here - you can pick the unionised socially conservative party, or the free-market even more socially conservative party. Oh who to vote for…I don't know, I think I'll just flip a coin and hope it explodes and kills me.

I ran the first three chapters on this yesterday and am loving it. I am still finding new and interesting combinations. so far my favorites are wall of volcanos, explosive land mines, Rock(immobile personal rock shield).

Side note.. If you create a large bubble shield and are trying to blast it down do not use arcane beam. It will bounce around the inside and you will die.

Right now it seems really easy to just AOE frost then AOE arcane/lightning to kill everything. I hope that strategy become less effective later on.

The rock shield's hilarious, but.. What do you do then? After the fight with the worm, I wondered if it'd have been viable to throw up the rock shield before it shoots through the ground, but I never tried it. The game could do with a chapter select.

I've found a lot of fights are made easy by launching Earth/Frost/Arcane projectiles. It could definitely do with some balancing; even creatures that are supposed to be vulnerable to fire are better off being blasted with arcane.

I use the rock shield after I drop the arcane mines so I can avoid the explosive damage when goblins walk over them. I also setup 4 water so I can do an AOE water blast to knock them back. In theory I could then do a lightning shield to maximize damage when they head back in, but I normally just blast them with lightning.

Personally I find that qfas kills most things quickly and easily, add another f if you feel like setting things on fire, qfae is pretty damn good too if you pop it behind you as you're running away.Steam and lightning seems to be a potent mix.

Francis wrote:Look on the bright side, if you all die I'll still be handsome

Bought this game 3 hours ago. Only reached level.. 6? The part just after the skyship.

Magic is awesome and hilarious, and due to not finding out by talking to people before I left, I discovered steam on my own later, which made Meteor Shower all the more rewarding.

At first I tried to play with two friends, one on the same LAN, the other in their own house. We killed each other a lot, during the tutorial. Then we encountered what felt like desync issues, where one player would be killed, and even though they were rezzed by another, they would stay dead in their own view. This issue did not resolve itself, and seems to make multiplayer unplayable.

Also, I'm on the fence about the difficulty level. I.. guess I should spoiler this?

Spoiler:

After you disembark from the skyship, you reach a druids circle. I got bounced around like a ragdoll in there, and got off only a few spells. The druids managed to damage and kill each other, and I really only had to fight one.

Then, I got up to the ruins. Cannot get past it. I can kill the first wave (I have thunderbolt memorised, and nearly got Meteor Shower down), then I get mobbed and the big things keep me knocked down, so I can't heal or AOE fast enough, and obviously can't run. And the druid that turns up doesn't help.The fact that enemies leap makes rock walls kinda useless, and shields go down too fast. Guess I just need to get crazyfast at spamming spells.

Also, for those of you who are obsessed with completion.

Spoiler:

Did you get grease? - Location: Upon exiting the tower at the beginning of the game, frost your way across the river (with the big bridge). It's on the floor on the opposite bank.Any ideas how to get the other book, on top of the bridge?

Nemiro wrote:Also, I'm on the fence about the difficulty level. I.. guess I should spoiler this?

Spoiler:

After you disembark from the skyship, you reach a druids circle. I got bounced around like a ragdoll in there, and got off only a few spells. The druids managed to damage and kill each other, and I really only had to fight one.Then, I got up to the ruins. Cannot get past it. I can kill the first wave (I have thunderbolt memorised, and nearly got Meteor Shower down), then I get mobbed and the big things keep me knocked down, so I can't heal or AOE fast enough, and obviously can't run. And the druid that turns up doesn't help.The fact that enemies leap makes rock walls kinda useless, and shields go down too fast. Guess I just need to get crazyfast at spamming spells.

Also, for those of you who are obsessed with completion.

Spoiler:

Did you get grease? - Location: Upon exiting the tower at the beginning of the game, frost your way across the river (with the big bridge). It's on the floor on the opposite bank.Any ideas how to get the other book, on top of the bridge?

Frost helps a lot in making large numbers of enemies more manageable, especially if you also cast haste on yourself. As for your second spoiler:

Spoiler:

You get that magick in a later chapter, though you can get it in multiplayer if you're persistent enough messing about with physics, i.e. mines and such. It's nothing particularly awesome though.

Jack Saladin wrote:Goddamn that's an awesome ****, Soapy. Once they get around to making artificial **** and I replace my crappy original ones, I'm gonna make mine look like that.

Awia wrote:Personally I find that qfas kills most things quickly and easily, add another f if you feel like setting things on fire, qfae is pretty damn good too if you pop it behind you as you're running away.Steam and lightning seems to be a potent mix.

Steam itself does a lot of damage, which combined with the lightning doing extra damage because of the water, and extra damage from the beam thing...yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. Out of impatience, or because I'm about to be slaughtered for the umpteenth time, I usually just use that steam-lightning-arcane beam on most things, and some kind of fire attack on the hordes of tinier enemies ("conflagration" or whatever it's called can take out a whole army of goblins or zombies in one shot).

I kinda have mixed feelings about this game...it's fun (and/or frustrating), and does away with many of the things that bug me about RPGs (there's no leveling, no inventory besides one staff and one weapon, and you get access to all the elements--and the two most commonly used spells--within the first 5 minutes instead of having to grind for days to get them), but it's got problems. It only saves at the end of each very long level. There's (sparse) checkpoints, but they're only for respawning; if you quit the game, it's back to the start of the level with you.

Also, shortly after I got all the spells/secrets/stuff, my save got erased for no reason. Various other nasty bugs exist, like cutscenes getting stuck, making you start the level over again because there's no "go to last checkpoint" button for some reason. They're working on these things, but watch out...and back up your saves.

By the way, Khan...sorry, KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN can be killed with a shield bubble. I can't think of a joke to go with that so I'm just going to say KHAAAAAAAAAAN again.

Nemiro wrote:At first I tried to play with two friends, one on the same LAN, the other in their own house.

Mind me asking how you got this to work? A friend and I are trying to get in a game together but when one hosts, the other can't see the game in the server list. Direct connect doesn't work either, stopping just moments after it starts with the 'connecting...' message, but that may be due to this problem. I'd like to be able to rule that one out.

Nemiro wrote:At first I tried to play with two friends, one on the same LAN, the other in their own house.

Mind me asking how you got this to work? A friend and I are trying to get in a game together but when one hosts, the other can't see the game in the server list. Direct connect doesn't work either, stopping just moments after it starts with the 'connecting...' message, but that may be due to this problem. I'd like to be able to rule that one out.

1) Host game2) Invite others with Steam3) ???*4) Profit!

* Other players click the "join game" link and, uh, join. Helps to have no password set (Steam join + password can mean endless auth fail messages), and yes, the server browser is crappy. I have been able to join games through it, but recently they're not showing.

Either way though, the desyncs and freezes are enough to make me write off multiplayer for now. It's just not worth the aggravation, which is a real shame. I hear the game was supposed to be a March release, and I wish they'd stuck to that because this game would be much better off for it.

Oh wow. I didn't realise it'd link up to Steam like that and I can just invite people directly. Thanks! I'll give it a go. And yeah, I'm not optimistic about the game at the moment either, but I'd like to know we can get a game going in time for the patches.

QFASA for a super power beam of deathQFAS which casts thunderbolt if you have the spell (which is ~5k damage or 10k if they're wet)ED(DDD) on self which makes a ridiculously powerful rockshield follow withQRASER AOE which throws up a freezing ice wall around you, that chain lightnings things a bit further out and then explodes. You do need to be careful with this one if there are things that can knock you around since you can get knocked into your own freezing aura from the shards which slows you a lot. RA(AAA) is also nice (though weak damage) at slowing a huge hoard of creatures if you can get it to chain right.

If you're finding the game too hectic the earth shield on yourself is really what allows you time to think about what to use. There really is not much that can break it down that quickly (especially if you use the fully powered one).

If I ever get multiplayer working, I'd like to divide up the spells between the players in some way so that people have to work together. They don't really split evenly though, and I reckon Life is essential to not dying. Maybe a simpler restriction like only one player being allowed to use Arcane, Lightning or Frost would work well.

QFSAAA is just ridiculous, constant high lightning damage that wets so it jumps at the same time? I only have the demo but I tried it on Vlad and it gets upto ridiculously high amounts of damage in a split second. Might be different in the full version though.

"Give up here?"- > No"Do you accept defeat?" - > No"Do you think games are silly little things?"- > No"Is it all pointless?"- > No"Do you admit there is no meaning to this world?"- > No

Gelsamel wrote:QFSAAA is just ridiculous, constant high lightning damage that wets so it jumps at the same time? I only have the demo but I tried it on Vlad and it gets upto ridiculously high amounts of damage in a split second. Might be different in the full version though.

Its not. Its the highest damage and DPS spell that I've seen. Set it up from inside a Rock shield and just cut a path through the monsters. Just remember not to cast it when its raining and you're wet or you die pretty quick.

I've not tried it. The best damage I've come across is rapidly blasting out area Arcane-Lightning next to frozen foes. I'm a big fan of wading into the middle with my Staff of War and doing that. At least I was until I foolishly gave up the staff for the M60.

This game is buggy as hell. I got it working on my desktop, but it runs extremely slowly, and twice now, conversations that auto start when you approach have caused the game to glitch, locking me in place, staring at a word bubble, spinning my little hooded wizard in circles.

I'll wait.

... with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

I carried the Aristocrat's Staff all the way to the end of the game specifically because of the Yeti's. It doesn't seem to be realistically possible to try to escape their grab before they instakill you (I did it once, but only once, out of sheer luck; every other time I died) so having Teleport binded to my middle mouse button saved me many times.

Yeti can't catch you if you're on fire. More importantly, they can't catch your friends if they're on fire, so take the opportunity to light them up as frequently as possible to account for surprise yeti attacks.

Jack Saladin wrote:Goddamn that's an awesome ****, Soapy. Once they get around to making artificial **** and I replace my crappy original ones, I'm gonna make mine look like that.